Search Headlines & Links: August 8, 2006

Below, a recap of stories posted today to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along
with other items we’ve spotted but not blogged separately:

From The SEW Blog…

Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2006 – Day Two
The Google Dance is later tonight, I will be going to that. But what happened on day two of the SES San Jose show? Well, Ben, Chris, Lee and I covered 10 sessions. Here is the recap, plus also make sure to check out some of the pics at Flickr tagged with sessanjose06, it is really filling up with images. Just posted some funny ones with Danny and some unusual clothing (make take an hour to show, posted at 9PM (EST))….

Yahoo Releases Updates To Site Explorer
During the Bot Obedience Course session at SES San Jose just a few minutes ago, Rajat at Yahoo announced a new upgrade to the Site Explorer tool they initially launched last year. The additions at Site Explorer include:…

More On AOL’s Search Release & Ways To Search The Records
I’ve got some follow-up items about yesterday’s story where AOL released user query records, including how anyone can now easily look at the data. First, after Barry did a recap of the news, I added a postscript to the story with more of my thoughts. In case you missed it, here are the key parts below:…

Google Fights Claims Of Some Third Party Click Fraud Studies
The Google Blog just posted a report on how they feel some of the independent third party click fraud reports published are exaggerating the clickfraud numbers. Google says they have seen some reports that show “1.5 times the number of clicks in our logs,” the reason? Well, Google summarized the “two main points” of the larger paper they published on the issue as being; (1) “mischaracterizing events,” i.e. clicking the back button and it being characterized as a click and (2) “conflation across advertisers and ad networks,” where cookie issues confuse Yahoo clicks with Google clicks. For the full, 17-page…

Yahoo News Gains Search Engine News Market Share
ComScore released a report showing Yahoo News has “31.2 million unique visitors” with 33 percent of all news traffic. Followed by Yahoo is MSNBC with 23.4 million or 25% share, then AOL News with 20.4 million unique visitors or 22% share. These numbers are based on June 2006 data. More details at ComScore….

Google Supplemental Results Get A Fresh Look
I reported this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable, that GoogleGuy announced Google has updated those pesky supplemental results. Supplemental results are those pages that are kind of in the Google index, but really in a secondary index. The pages in the supplemental results tend to be staler and rank worse then the normal documents in the main Google index. In any event, the supplemental results have been updated and should be somewhat more fresh….

Google Adds Video Tab to Related Links
The Google Blog announced that Google has added a new tab within the Related Links product for video. Google Videos, related to your content, will be embedded in the Related Links tab, if you so desire to have them shown….

Exalead Previews New Beta Version
Exalead is previewing a new version. (If you want to take a peek the login is beta). It’s still early days yet, but the design is much easier on the eye and less complicated. I’ve got some initial thoughts on my own weblog but in summary it’s an overall improvement on an already excellent resource….

Use Google But Don’t Google Asks Google
Google’s trademark lawyer has been busy apparently. The search engine is keen for people to use Google, but not to ‘google’ something. The search engine took offense at a comment in the Washington Post describing the word ‘google’ as moving beyond a specific product to becoming a descriptor of an entire sector. Google thinks that this is “genericide” and should be avoided. According to the (hand addressed) letter sent to the Washington Post Google has come up with some examples or suggestions to linguistically aid us in the future. What is appropriate is “He ego-surfs on the Google search engine…

New Search Patent Applications: August 8, 2006 – Focusing on the Searcher
This last week’s patent applications involving search all seem to focus upon users of search engines, and finding ways to fulfill intentions behind searches. There are a couple from Stanford professor Louis Rosenberg and his company Outland Research, that focus upon a searcher’s personal interests and attributes, and two from America Online involving dictionary searches and meta searches. Microsoft also has a pair of patent filings on interesting ways to refine search results after a search has been conducted. And, IBM comes up with a related duo on measuring how documents served as search results are used, including an incentive…

This week, both LinkedIn and Facebook are beefing up their paid social offerings in different ways, while Google seeks to cut off Adwords revenues for fake news sites. And might Google be favouring desktop over its own AMP in its upcoming mobile-first index?

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.